Thirsty Lion setlist looks like:
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (slow and sleazy)
Bluebird on My Windshield (fast bluegrass)
Can I Have your Car When the Rapture Comes? (slow Gospel)
The Termite Song (fast bluegrass)
Hey. Little Chicken (a osrt-of blues)
I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas (mod. slow country)
Just about exactly 25 minutes (I’ve practiced it four times now). Still waiting for confirmation that I can be on first (like, at 8:30) if I show up first; that’ll be important for the advertising. I have warned the fellow in charge of the event that some of the folks who would be coming to see me still have jobs and have to get up in the morning.
I want to go into Portland next Tuesday and stop in at the Thirsty Lion, and see how they run the show and what the hall, audience, and sound engineer are like. (The online photos don’t show the stage. It does look like a sizable place, but—having done it myself—I know how misleading photos can be.) That’d be the time to distribute posters as well
Southern Oregon Songwriters want me to do the programs for the 2009 Summer Concert season at Pfaff Park in Central Point. Same format as last year. I’ll be in one of the concerts, too—22 August. I’ll need a band, and hopefully can assemble one from folks I know down there.
It is time to start organizing Concert Season. Roughly from July 4 until some time in October every year is when I try to have the major concerts, festival performances, &c. I didn’t do much at all in 2008—I lost my job, moved twice, and a lot of festivals were cancelled (or I couldn’t get to them) because of the price of gas. 2009, however, may be shaping up better.
The City of Central Point does their own series of summer concerts in the park, and I hit them up for a slot; it won’t happen this year (their agenda’s full), but I might be able to get one for next year. They have a Labor Day concert, too, that wasn’t on their schedule; I don’t know if that’s booked separately (I think it was last year). I forgot to ask about that one.
I think we-the-band can have a slot at Garibaldi Days for the asking. We could have either two hours between 3 and 6 p.m. (roughly from the time the Talent Show’s over to the time the Beer Garden opens), or 1-1/2 to 2 hours in the Beer Garden from fireworks (10 p.m.) to closing (midnight). Drummer Chris’s suggestion was to take the afternoon, and I think everyone else agrees. More of a listening crowd, with less pressure to play dance music to make people drink more. An afternoon slot means we can do more of my music, too, and not have to learn a whole bunch more new stuff.
Trade-off is the pay for the afternoon slot will probably be nothing (the Beer Garden does pay), unless we can sweet-talk somebody into being a sponsor. Donations for Garibaldi Days are way down, just as they are for most fun activities. People who don’t have money don’t give money.
There’s going to be a Talent Show at Garibaldi Days, too, and I want to play. I wonder if I could enlist Dick and his wife Carol (she of the beautiful voice) to do it with me? We could do Gospel songs. The last time we did that was six years ago, at the county fair.
So… Thus far we have me playing solo at the Thirsty Lion June 9, with the band at the Garibaldi Museum June 27, Garibaldi Days at the Talent Show and with the band, and in Central Point August 22. It’s starting to shape up as a decent Concert Season. I will have to forego the Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival, because it’s on the same weekend as Garibaldi Days—and much as I’d like to, I don’t see how I can make it to Pineyfest this summer. There’s just not going to be any money.
Joe
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
DOING DYLAN...
Finish one blog, start another. Sometimes life is like that. I’m waiting for an answer to a phone call (which I may not get), for calls for job interviews (which I’m sure I’m not going to get), avoiding cleaning house, and holding off on applying for another of those jobs I’m not qualified for.
An exhaustive search for songwriting contests on line uncovered one potential gem—a competition in England, of all places, for original Dylan-type songs. They’re calling it “Doing Dylan.” They want (this is from their Website) “ORIGINAL songs which sing out against SOCIAL INJUSTICE, POLITICAL CORRUPTION, RACIAL BIGOTRY, RELIGIOUS FANATICISM!” It appears to be a small outfit; only one judge (he does have connections to the BBC, though) and the entry fee is in British pounds sterling. (The prizes—all small—are all in pounds sterling, too.)
I do have a couple of songs that would be worth submitting under those parameters. (I can pay by PayPal, which will calculate the exchange rate.) Bob Dylan is one of the brightest stars in my Heaven of Heroes, and I’ve emulated his styles (he had a bunch of them) a lot, trying to learn every writing trick I could. The two potential contenders for the contest are “No Good Songs About the War,” which is country music, and the Southern Pigfish song “For Their own Ends,” which is folk-rock. I would probably just give ‘em one of the two; I don’t have that many pounds sterling to my name, no matter what the exchange rate is.
“No Good Songs About the War” was a deliberately classic protest song intended as a demonstration of how protest songs are supposed to be written. Dylan wasn’t doing country music back when he wrote his most famous protest songs, of course, but country music is what I write, and this song adapted his rules to my style, as it were. It was the only song the band did at the Bay City concert that we had a definitive arrangement worked out for; Dick Ackerman played “Amazing Grace” on the blues harp at the break (turns out the chord progression is the same), and a few bars of “Taps” at the end. Nary a dry eye in the house.
“For Their Own Ends” tackles a completely different Dylan period—and again, does so deliberately. With “For Their Own Ends” as a pre-assigned title (for a contest), I went for the only style that would allow me to write anything I wanted—classic Dylanesque obscurantism from the folk-rock period, where titles had no connection at all to the lyrics. (The song has no chorus, either—though it does have a hook. That’s also typical of Dylan songs of the period.) “For Their Own Ends” is an angry-sounding look at the economy through the windows of a thrift store, written just about the time the economy started to fall apart. The band played that one in the Failed Economy Show—and we had people out of their chairs dancing.
The recordings I have of both songs are just drafts, done on the little Tascam with me playing all parts. For the “Doing Dylan” contest, I’d want to do better. I have proposed to bass player John that we try out both with his recording equipment, and he appears willing. I’ll overlay a simple lead guitar; it’s Dick’s harmonica lead that’s going to carry the song in both cases.
AND ANOTHER GIG: Tuesday, 9 June, at a pub in downtown Portland called the Thirsty Lion. Solo, unless I can persuade blues harp player Don Johnson (late of the aborted Portland band) to come with—he’d be a nice touch, but he may be working. Just a 25-minute set—6 songs, if I’m doing it solo. They say they’re offering paying gigs to those who bring in the most traffic, but I don’t know if I can generate that much.
Joe
An exhaustive search for songwriting contests on line uncovered one potential gem—a competition in England, of all places, for original Dylan-type songs. They’re calling it “Doing Dylan.” They want (this is from their Website) “ORIGINAL songs which sing out against SOCIAL INJUSTICE, POLITICAL CORRUPTION, RACIAL BIGOTRY, RELIGIOUS FANATICISM!” It appears to be a small outfit; only one judge (he does have connections to the BBC, though) and the entry fee is in British pounds sterling. (The prizes—all small—are all in pounds sterling, too.)
I do have a couple of songs that would be worth submitting under those parameters. (I can pay by PayPal, which will calculate the exchange rate.) Bob Dylan is one of the brightest stars in my Heaven of Heroes, and I’ve emulated his styles (he had a bunch of them) a lot, trying to learn every writing trick I could. The two potential contenders for the contest are “No Good Songs About the War,” which is country music, and the Southern Pigfish song “For Their own Ends,” which is folk-rock. I would probably just give ‘em one of the two; I don’t have that many pounds sterling to my name, no matter what the exchange rate is.
“No Good Songs About the War” was a deliberately classic protest song intended as a demonstration of how protest songs are supposed to be written. Dylan wasn’t doing country music back when he wrote his most famous protest songs, of course, but country music is what I write, and this song adapted his rules to my style, as it were. It was the only song the band did at the Bay City concert that we had a definitive arrangement worked out for; Dick Ackerman played “Amazing Grace” on the blues harp at the break (turns out the chord progression is the same), and a few bars of “Taps” at the end. Nary a dry eye in the house.
“For Their Own Ends” tackles a completely different Dylan period—and again, does so deliberately. With “For Their Own Ends” as a pre-assigned title (for a contest), I went for the only style that would allow me to write anything I wanted—classic Dylanesque obscurantism from the folk-rock period, where titles had no connection at all to the lyrics. (The song has no chorus, either—though it does have a hook. That’s also typical of Dylan songs of the period.) “For Their Own Ends” is an angry-sounding look at the economy through the windows of a thrift store, written just about the time the economy started to fall apart. The band played that one in the Failed Economy Show—and we had people out of their chairs dancing.
The recordings I have of both songs are just drafts, done on the little Tascam with me playing all parts. For the “Doing Dylan” contest, I’d want to do better. I have proposed to bass player John that we try out both with his recording equipment, and he appears willing. I’ll overlay a simple lead guitar; it’s Dick’s harmonica lead that’s going to carry the song in both cases.
AND ANOTHER GIG: Tuesday, 9 June, at a pub in downtown Portland called the Thirsty Lion. Solo, unless I can persuade blues harp player Don Johnson (late of the aborted Portland band) to come with—he’d be a nice touch, but he may be working. Just a 25-minute set—6 songs, if I’m doing it solo. They say they’re offering paying gigs to those who bring in the most traffic, but I don’t know if I can generate that much.
Joe
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
CONTESTS...
It’s almost June—and almost time to take a mid-year look at those goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. It won’t be a pleasant look; I have, I think, accomplished virtually nothing on the list. It’s easy—too easy—to point to outside factors (no job, no money) as reasons for not getting anything done. They are really just excuses. The operative question (as Richard Nixon would say) is what I’m doing with what I have.
I have a habit of freezing up when confronted with disappointment, and that’s a dangerous tendency that needs to be controlled. Taken to its logical extreme—which I can do easily—I do nothing, because I’m accomplishing nothing. The flip side, of course, is I’m accomplishing nothing because I’m doing nothing. Hardly a recipe for success.
My solution—the same one I gave employees when I was a city manager—is a Work Program. Here is a list of things to do. We will do them without worrying in advance about the results. After they’re done, we will look at them, and decide what we can do better next time around. But not until after, okay?
First action in the Work Program (first because it’s simple) is to enter the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest. The Goals call for entering at least two contests each year; this will be one of them. The contest appears to be the effort of a local group (in Michigan), and winning includes getting to perform on stage—both pluses. Deadline’s not until September, but there’s a $3 discount if I enter before 31 May, and since I am waydam cheap and almost out of money, I will do that.
What to send them? “Bluebird on My Windshield,” I think; I consider it one of the best I’ve written, and it hasn’t been entered in a contest before. It’s under five minutes (these folks have a 5-minute rule, like a lot of contests), and I do have a recording I can send them that was done in a professional studio with a real band. (I would not send a home recording to a contest I wanted to win.)
A nice (for me) feature of this contest is I can disconnect entering and winning. The winners won’t be announced for a good six months, and by then I may have even forgotten I entered. If I win, it’ll be a nice surprise, and if I don’t, it won’t be anything to be discouraged about.
Is there another contest I might want to tackle this year? Right now, there isn’t an obvious one. No Hank Williams Festival this year (too bad—I wanted to send them “Hank’s Song”), and no Woody Guthrie contest, either (and I had a couple of good contenders for that one, too); both are apparently victims of the Depression. American Idol didn’t do a contest this year, either; reportedly AI’s new judge, who’s a songwriter, got it written into her contract that she, not someone else, would write the New Song to be performed by the winning contestant. (Critics, I guess, were not very impressed with the song she wrote.)
There won’t be a talent show at the Tillamook County Fair this year, either. The Fair Board, following their conviction that there is no such thing as local talent, decided there was no point in having any talent show. So Tillamook will be the only one of 36 counties that won’t be sending acts to perform at the Oregon State Fair. That does give me an excuse to enter talent shows in county fairs to the north, south and east; the State Fair’s rules allow it, but I don’t know if I want to take advantage of it.
The Rogue Community College “Star of Stars” contest in southern Oregon, which I entered last year, is attractive—and it was fun; however, I did learn from experience that it’s not one I have any chance of winning. The winner will be a student from the college, and the contest is intended to raise money to give that student a scholarship. It’s a great cause, and I’d help in a heartbeat if I either (1) had the money or (2) lived in the area. From 300-plus miles away, it costs a few hundred bucks in gas to be a part of it, and I don’t have it.
The other possibility for a contest this year may be the one put on by the Portland (OR) Songwriters Assn. Its deadline is in September. There’s a discount on the entry fee if you’re a member—and I’ve thought seriously for several years now about joining the organization as well as entering their contest. Portland is not a hotbed of country music—but southern Oregon wasn’t, either, before I moved there.
UPCOMING: Music Friday night at City Hall, Saturday at the Library (and someone may be there from the West Linn Library, where I’ve applied to be part of their local entertainment). Practice Sunday with the band, I think.
Joe
I have a habit of freezing up when confronted with disappointment, and that’s a dangerous tendency that needs to be controlled. Taken to its logical extreme—which I can do easily—I do nothing, because I’m accomplishing nothing. The flip side, of course, is I’m accomplishing nothing because I’m doing nothing. Hardly a recipe for success.
My solution—the same one I gave employees when I was a city manager—is a Work Program. Here is a list of things to do. We will do them without worrying in advance about the results. After they’re done, we will look at them, and decide what we can do better next time around. But not until after, okay?
First action in the Work Program (first because it’s simple) is to enter the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest. The Goals call for entering at least two contests each year; this will be one of them. The contest appears to be the effort of a local group (in Michigan), and winning includes getting to perform on stage—both pluses. Deadline’s not until September, but there’s a $3 discount if I enter before 31 May, and since I am waydam cheap and almost out of money, I will do that.
What to send them? “Bluebird on My Windshield,” I think; I consider it one of the best I’ve written, and it hasn’t been entered in a contest before. It’s under five minutes (these folks have a 5-minute rule, like a lot of contests), and I do have a recording I can send them that was done in a professional studio with a real band. (I would not send a home recording to a contest I wanted to win.)
A nice (for me) feature of this contest is I can disconnect entering and winning. The winners won’t be announced for a good six months, and by then I may have even forgotten I entered. If I win, it’ll be a nice surprise, and if I don’t, it won’t be anything to be discouraged about.
Is there another contest I might want to tackle this year? Right now, there isn’t an obvious one. No Hank Williams Festival this year (too bad—I wanted to send them “Hank’s Song”), and no Woody Guthrie contest, either (and I had a couple of good contenders for that one, too); both are apparently victims of the Depression. American Idol didn’t do a contest this year, either; reportedly AI’s new judge, who’s a songwriter, got it written into her contract that she, not someone else, would write the New Song to be performed by the winning contestant. (Critics, I guess, were not very impressed with the song she wrote.)
There won’t be a talent show at the Tillamook County Fair this year, either. The Fair Board, following their conviction that there is no such thing as local talent, decided there was no point in having any talent show. So Tillamook will be the only one of 36 counties that won’t be sending acts to perform at the Oregon State Fair. That does give me an excuse to enter talent shows in county fairs to the north, south and east; the State Fair’s rules allow it, but I don’t know if I want to take advantage of it.
The Rogue Community College “Star of Stars” contest in southern Oregon, which I entered last year, is attractive—and it was fun; however, I did learn from experience that it’s not one I have any chance of winning. The winner will be a student from the college, and the contest is intended to raise money to give that student a scholarship. It’s a great cause, and I’d help in a heartbeat if I either (1) had the money or (2) lived in the area. From 300-plus miles away, it costs a few hundred bucks in gas to be a part of it, and I don’t have it.
The other possibility for a contest this year may be the one put on by the Portland (OR) Songwriters Assn. Its deadline is in September. There’s a discount on the entry fee if you’re a member—and I’ve thought seriously for several years now about joining the organization as well as entering their contest. Portland is not a hotbed of country music—but southern Oregon wasn’t, either, before I moved there.
UPCOMING: Music Friday night at City Hall, Saturday at the Library (and someone may be there from the West Linn Library, where I’ve applied to be part of their local entertainment). Practice Sunday with the band, I think.
Joe
Friday, May 22, 2009
ONE WEEK LEFT...
ONE WEEK left of unemployment benefits, and then it’s all over. I can get a cheap job (if there are any to be had), see if I can squeeze out enough to pay for school… Yes, it’s time to go back to school. After 14 months out of work, I’m pretty unemployable as a city manager. I do have five applications still pending, but I’m not expecting anything out of them. My old job as city planner in Phoenix is being advertised again (after a 14-month hiatus), but they’re requiring a college degree in planning I don’t have, and can’t have for at least two years. I responded anyway (I warned the folks in Phoenix I would do that), and included—just to rub it in—the Official Letter from the vice-mayor (one of the guys who voted to fire me) saying what a great planner I was and what an asset I’d be to just about anybody.
An assistant librarian job to apply for (pays nothing, but it’s at the local library), and the “FAFSA”—that Godawful pages-upon-pages Federal application for student aid that everybody in Creation uses—to fill out, plus still more paperwork for the community college (it appears I can get up to 8 credit hours free if I can convince the right people).
Musically, I’ve started mining Craigslist again for solo gigs in the Portland area. One of the more interesting solicitations came from the city library in West Linn, Oregon, a suburb of Portland; they’ve created a nice performance space for their musicians, and they do pay. Recalling the general level of expertise of a lot of the folks who do gigs like that, I expect I’d have a chance. Being a public agency, one would hope they’d have a less lackadaisical attitude about answering responses than most Craigslist advertisers, but it’s too early to tell. Somebody from the West Linn Library is reportedly coming to the Tillamook Library in a week to hear the music, so that’s an opportunity to impress someone. Maybe.
The “American Blues Blog” people never did respond to my entries (while sending a few e-mails promising they would), but they’ve hired other folks while I’ve been waiting—from New York (two), Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Pittsburgh. The insistence that only big cities matter gets annoying at times. I did run into a book about the blues, full of a lot of theory and tons of juicy quotes and lyrics; it was a science-fiction novel, of all things—The Gutbucket Quest, supposedly by Piers Anthony (but actually written by a friend of his, an out-of-work musician). So now I know a lot more about the blues, but have nowhere to go with it. (There is probably a song in that.)
On the good news front (there is always a good news front—it’s just that sometimes, as the Weather Channel will tell you, those fronts can be kinda weak), I have—finally—a complete first verse to “The Reincarnation Song,” which has been kicking around in the head for over a year. (The title is tentative, of course. An audience will tell me what the title really is.) I don’t know if it’ll be The Best Thing I Ever Wrote; sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not. It is nice to know I wrote something, and it wasn’t garbage. A lot of writers keep their writing muscles exercised by writing something—anything—every day, and I don’t; for me, it’s got to feel “right”—not necessarily perfect (we’ll take care of that later), but “right.” If it ain’t right, I will deliberately forget it. I don’t have memory cells to waste.
It’s a love song, and that’s one of the things that’s made it hard—I’m not very demonstrative, so love songs are hard. I’ve written only two, I think, in my whole life, not counting the drivel I did as an over-hormoned teenager with a reluctant-to-get-into-bed girlfriend. This one will be bluegrass, of course, since it’s got death in it (one can’t have reincarnation without death, after all).
I also had a chance to do some recorded lead guitar work, on someone else’s blues instrumental (it’s supposed to get words later), and that was fun. It’s excellent practice for the mostly tone-deaf ears—I have to spot chord changes without the luxury of seeing another player’s hands. So I did three leads, two on the Strat (one on the bass strings and one treble) and one on the Electric Banjo. They’re all simple (and if listened to separately, painfully so), but they hang together okay, and are nice against the rhythm piano track the fellow sent. I don’t know what the author will think of them.
Music Friday and Saturday (and a square dance Saturday night). I still want to put new strings on the J-200.
--Joe
An assistant librarian job to apply for (pays nothing, but it’s at the local library), and the “FAFSA”—that Godawful pages-upon-pages Federal application for student aid that everybody in Creation uses—to fill out, plus still more paperwork for the community college (it appears I can get up to 8 credit hours free if I can convince the right people).
Musically, I’ve started mining Craigslist again for solo gigs in the Portland area. One of the more interesting solicitations came from the city library in West Linn, Oregon, a suburb of Portland; they’ve created a nice performance space for their musicians, and they do pay. Recalling the general level of expertise of a lot of the folks who do gigs like that, I expect I’d have a chance. Being a public agency, one would hope they’d have a less lackadaisical attitude about answering responses than most Craigslist advertisers, but it’s too early to tell. Somebody from the West Linn Library is reportedly coming to the Tillamook Library in a week to hear the music, so that’s an opportunity to impress someone. Maybe.
The “American Blues Blog” people never did respond to my entries (while sending a few e-mails promising they would), but they’ve hired other folks while I’ve been waiting—from New York (two), Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Pittsburgh. The insistence that only big cities matter gets annoying at times. I did run into a book about the blues, full of a lot of theory and tons of juicy quotes and lyrics; it was a science-fiction novel, of all things—The Gutbucket Quest, supposedly by Piers Anthony (but actually written by a friend of his, an out-of-work musician). So now I know a lot more about the blues, but have nowhere to go with it. (There is probably a song in that.)
On the good news front (there is always a good news front—it’s just that sometimes, as the Weather Channel will tell you, those fronts can be kinda weak), I have—finally—a complete first verse to “The Reincarnation Song,” which has been kicking around in the head for over a year. (The title is tentative, of course. An audience will tell me what the title really is.) I don’t know if it’ll be The Best Thing I Ever Wrote; sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not. It is nice to know I wrote something, and it wasn’t garbage. A lot of writers keep their writing muscles exercised by writing something—anything—every day, and I don’t; for me, it’s got to feel “right”—not necessarily perfect (we’ll take care of that later), but “right.” If it ain’t right, I will deliberately forget it. I don’t have memory cells to waste.
It’s a love song, and that’s one of the things that’s made it hard—I’m not very demonstrative, so love songs are hard. I’ve written only two, I think, in my whole life, not counting the drivel I did as an over-hormoned teenager with a reluctant-to-get-into-bed girlfriend. This one will be bluegrass, of course, since it’s got death in it (one can’t have reincarnation without death, after all).
I also had a chance to do some recorded lead guitar work, on someone else’s blues instrumental (it’s supposed to get words later), and that was fun. It’s excellent practice for the mostly tone-deaf ears—I have to spot chord changes without the luxury of seeing another player’s hands. So I did three leads, two on the Strat (one on the bass strings and one treble) and one on the Electric Banjo. They’re all simple (and if listened to separately, painfully so), but they hang together okay, and are nice against the rhythm piano track the fellow sent. I don’t know what the author will think of them.
Music Friday and Saturday (and a square dance Saturday night). I still want to put new strings on the J-200.
--Joe
Friday, May 15, 2009
GETTING PLAYED (AND VICE VERSA)...
UPDATES, first: I sent a draft first column to the “American Blues” people, and am waiting to hear back from them. (It’s been a couple of days.) I’ve questioned their insistence on the correspondents having to come from Nashville, New York, L.A. and a couple of other big cities. These days, the Internet makes such distinctions meaningless—and I’d submit a place like Portland, 90 miles from me, with a fairly vibrant live music scene, probably has more and better blues being performed than, say, Nashville. So you’ve never heard of the performers? So what? Maybe it’s time somebody did.
The band (the one on the Coast—there’s only one now) will get together to practice Sunday, and we’ll try our hand at recording “Rotten Candy” for Polly Hager while we’re at it. We’ll see in the process what we can make John’s recorder do, and see what we have to do to record drums. We’ll do what I described (no one having figured out a better alternative)—record a “base” with drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and a scratch vocal, mix it, send it (sans vocal) to Polly to record her voice, then add blues harp and guitar leads when we get the vocal track back.
What’s going to happen with the song? I don’t know. If the product is good enough, I might enter it in that song contest in Michigan, and see what happens. The recording is really irrelevant, though; what would be most important to me would be getting the song performed. If Polly and her band add the song to their repertoire, and it starts getting played around the venues in Cincinnati, what I’ve done is clone myself. (And the intro—“this is The Song That Was Rejected By American Idol”—is guaranteed to get some attention. I’ve done it myself.) Just give me credit as the writer—that’s all I ask.
This isn’t the only way for a writer to make it in the music business, but it is one of the best—it gives you the maximum bang for the buck. It’s nothing new; it was something done extensively back in the 1960s. Somebody who couldn’t sing (Bob Dylan was a prime example) had their stuff performed by people who could sing, and in the process got attention as a writer—to the point, finally, where they could no longer be ignored.
It still works—a good tool can be used by anybody—even though the music business today is a lot more centrally controlled, and maybe more determined to make sure outsiders don’t get in. So ignore the Big Boys, and let them play their internal games. There are plenty of performers—some even regionally famous—who need good material to get themselves even more attention. Why shouldn’t they have mine?
Not all the songs I’ve written would work for other people. Folks have said some of my material couldn’t be effectively presented by anybody but me, and they may be right. On the other hand, I have heard some surprises. “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” originally written by me as a bluegrass tune, has been performed by a punk-rock band, and recorded both as rock ‘n’ roll (by a keyboard player I know) and as electronica. (I like the electronica one best.) You never can tell.
I haven’t pushed it, and sometimes wonder if I should. While I fulminate about the music industry’s attitude towards promoting yourself to people who are in a position to help you—I think the prohibition is driven more by the industry not wanting any outside input—I guess I have taken it to heart, to an extent. I don’t push. I just try to be a lot of places, and in contact with a lot of people, and keep letting them know I write stuff. (That’s become my standard introduction at concerts—“I’m Joe. I write stuff.”) I wonder whether I’m doing enough. I haven’t seen enough results to satisfy me.
This performing other writers’ stuff does work both ways—I should be doing their stuff, too--but it’s been hard for me to do other people’s material because I mostly can’t sing it; it’s outside my narrow voice range. However, I do have some I can do now. We got a mess of material for the Failed Economy Show, and I learned to sing some of it, and the band have learned to play it, and I’d like to keep incorporating it in our concerts, if the authors thereof are willing. Songs that get people out of their chairs and dancing are songs that should be performed, anywhere and everywhere possible.
Joe
The band (the one on the Coast—there’s only one now) will get together to practice Sunday, and we’ll try our hand at recording “Rotten Candy” for Polly Hager while we’re at it. We’ll see in the process what we can make John’s recorder do, and see what we have to do to record drums. We’ll do what I described (no one having figured out a better alternative)—record a “base” with drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and a scratch vocal, mix it, send it (sans vocal) to Polly to record her voice, then add blues harp and guitar leads when we get the vocal track back.
What’s going to happen with the song? I don’t know. If the product is good enough, I might enter it in that song contest in Michigan, and see what happens. The recording is really irrelevant, though; what would be most important to me would be getting the song performed. If Polly and her band add the song to their repertoire, and it starts getting played around the venues in Cincinnati, what I’ve done is clone myself. (And the intro—“this is The Song That Was Rejected By American Idol”—is guaranteed to get some attention. I’ve done it myself.) Just give me credit as the writer—that’s all I ask.
This isn’t the only way for a writer to make it in the music business, but it is one of the best—it gives you the maximum bang for the buck. It’s nothing new; it was something done extensively back in the 1960s. Somebody who couldn’t sing (Bob Dylan was a prime example) had their stuff performed by people who could sing, and in the process got attention as a writer—to the point, finally, where they could no longer be ignored.
It still works—a good tool can be used by anybody—even though the music business today is a lot more centrally controlled, and maybe more determined to make sure outsiders don’t get in. So ignore the Big Boys, and let them play their internal games. There are plenty of performers—some even regionally famous—who need good material to get themselves even more attention. Why shouldn’t they have mine?
Not all the songs I’ve written would work for other people. Folks have said some of my material couldn’t be effectively presented by anybody but me, and they may be right. On the other hand, I have heard some surprises. “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” originally written by me as a bluegrass tune, has been performed by a punk-rock band, and recorded both as rock ‘n’ roll (by a keyboard player I know) and as electronica. (I like the electronica one best.) You never can tell.
I haven’t pushed it, and sometimes wonder if I should. While I fulminate about the music industry’s attitude towards promoting yourself to people who are in a position to help you—I think the prohibition is driven more by the industry not wanting any outside input—I guess I have taken it to heart, to an extent. I don’t push. I just try to be a lot of places, and in contact with a lot of people, and keep letting them know I write stuff. (That’s become my standard introduction at concerts—“I’m Joe. I write stuff.”) I wonder whether I’m doing enough. I haven’t seen enough results to satisfy me.
This performing other writers’ stuff does work both ways—I should be doing their stuff, too--but it’s been hard for me to do other people’s material because I mostly can’t sing it; it’s outside my narrow voice range. However, I do have some I can do now. We got a mess of material for the Failed Economy Show, and I learned to sing some of it, and the band have learned to play it, and I’d like to keep incorporating it in our concerts, if the authors thereof are willing. Songs that get people out of their chairs and dancing are songs that should be performed, anywhere and everywhere possible.
Joe
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
THE FAILED ECONOMY SHOW VIDEO...
Got the video of the Failed Economy Show, and alas, it’s probably not marketable. I don’t know if it was the microphones we recorded with or the awful acoustics of the hall, but the sound isn’t very good. The vocal is too faint, and so is the harmonica—sometimes the harmonica isn’t audible at all—or maybe it’s that the rhythm guitar (me) is too loud. I am not doing anything particularly interesting on the guitar, and it definitely shows.
Some of the songs come off too slow, too—partly because I was almost shouting to make myself heard, and that slows things down. If the vocal could be made more prominent electronically, the music could be faster.
So if I had (or have) the chance, I’d like to re-do all the songs. Which songs? Basically, everything except the Woody Guthrie ones—seven by me, and nine by other people, a maximum of 16 songs (which I understand is the maximum that can be fit on a standard CD, anyway). I’d want to contact the eight authors whose material we used; every one we got an okay from, we’d use on the CD.
I can think of two ways to do the recording, one with John’s new mixer and the other with mine. I have more confidence in myself as a recording engineer since putting together the “Broken Record” CD for Beth Williams; the four songs I recorded for that (all on the Tascam) were, I thought, as good quality-wise as the professionally-done stuff I was sent, and the fellow who did the mastering didn’t distinguish mine separately from any of the others. So I can do studio-quality work with what I’ve got, even though what I’ve got is old, primitive, strange, and operated by a mostly tone-deaf guy. Good to know.
I would record rhythm guitar, bass, drums, and a “scratch” vocal live, then overlay the harmonica, lead guitar (or other lead instrument), and “real” vocal. If we were using my equipment (the 4-channel Tascam and my ancient 6-channel mixer), I’d have to mix the guitar, bass and drums first, before dumping it to the computer, and then add the other three tracks separately. I would probably end up doing the mixing on the computer (in Audacity). I know John’s mixer has more channels; what I don’t know is how much more memory it’s got.
One of the frustrating aspects of the Tascam is its digital camera-chip brain, that can hold only one song at a time (I think I could make it hold two if we were real careful). That’d mean for recording the “base” tracks (drums, bass, and rhythm guitar) on the Tascam, I’d have to haul “Alice” the computer to wherever we were doing it, so I could upload the mix, song by song, and clear the Tascam’s chip-brain for the next song. Otherwise, I’d be limited to doing two “base” tracks a day, which would make this take a long time. It would be easier to use John’s equipment.
One nice advantage of doing the “base” tracks and then overlaying leads is I could get nice touches like a piano on Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century.” There’s a piano in the music room at the Tillamook Library, and the librarian knows an experienced piano player. The Tascam can go anywhere there’s electricity (and if the electricity isn’t exactly close, I have a 100-foot extension cord).
Polly Hager, who sings with a rock band in Cincinnati, Ohio, is interested in doing a lead vocal on “Rotten Candy,” the song that was rejected two years ago by American Idol, but she’d like to use my band rather than hers. We can do this, I think, if the band are interested. I’d do it the same way—record a “base” track with rhythm guitar, bass and drums, have her record vocals to that and send ‘em back to me, and then I’d overlay lead guitar and Dick’s harmonica. It would be an interesting experiment, and good preparation for the rest of the recording.
Joe
Some of the songs come off too slow, too—partly because I was almost shouting to make myself heard, and that slows things down. If the vocal could be made more prominent electronically, the music could be faster.
So if I had (or have) the chance, I’d like to re-do all the songs. Which songs? Basically, everything except the Woody Guthrie ones—seven by me, and nine by other people, a maximum of 16 songs (which I understand is the maximum that can be fit on a standard CD, anyway). I’d want to contact the eight authors whose material we used; every one we got an okay from, we’d use on the CD.
I can think of two ways to do the recording, one with John’s new mixer and the other with mine. I have more confidence in myself as a recording engineer since putting together the “Broken Record” CD for Beth Williams; the four songs I recorded for that (all on the Tascam) were, I thought, as good quality-wise as the professionally-done stuff I was sent, and the fellow who did the mastering didn’t distinguish mine separately from any of the others. So I can do studio-quality work with what I’ve got, even though what I’ve got is old, primitive, strange, and operated by a mostly tone-deaf guy. Good to know.
I would record rhythm guitar, bass, drums, and a “scratch” vocal live, then overlay the harmonica, lead guitar (or other lead instrument), and “real” vocal. If we were using my equipment (the 4-channel Tascam and my ancient 6-channel mixer), I’d have to mix the guitar, bass and drums first, before dumping it to the computer, and then add the other three tracks separately. I would probably end up doing the mixing on the computer (in Audacity). I know John’s mixer has more channels; what I don’t know is how much more memory it’s got.
One of the frustrating aspects of the Tascam is its digital camera-chip brain, that can hold only one song at a time (I think I could make it hold two if we were real careful). That’d mean for recording the “base” tracks (drums, bass, and rhythm guitar) on the Tascam, I’d have to haul “Alice” the computer to wherever we were doing it, so I could upload the mix, song by song, and clear the Tascam’s chip-brain for the next song. Otherwise, I’d be limited to doing two “base” tracks a day, which would make this take a long time. It would be easier to use John’s equipment.
One nice advantage of doing the “base” tracks and then overlaying leads is I could get nice touches like a piano on Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century.” There’s a piano in the music room at the Tillamook Library, and the librarian knows an experienced piano player. The Tascam can go anywhere there’s electricity (and if the electricity isn’t exactly close, I have a 100-foot extension cord).
Polly Hager, who sings with a rock band in Cincinnati, Ohio, is interested in doing a lead vocal on “Rotten Candy,” the song that was rejected two years ago by American Idol, but she’d like to use my band rather than hers. We can do this, I think, if the band are interested. I’d do it the same way—record a “base” track with rhythm guitar, bass and drums, have her record vocals to that and send ‘em back to me, and then I’d overlay lead guitar and Dick’s harmonica. It would be an interesting experiment, and good preparation for the rest of the recording.
Joe
Monday, May 11, 2009
SHOVELING DIRT...
The Portland band is breaking up. The bass player is getting a divorce and moving to California (not necessarily in that order), the blues harp player got his job back, and I’ve already mentioned the lead guitarist going flaky. I hope both the bass player and harp player continue practicing their instruments, because they’re new at them (albeit good at them), and I hope the lead guitarist realizes he should be practicing, too. I’ve solicited a gig at a Portland coffeehouse (no word back yet, of course), but emphasized it’ll have to be solo.
At home, in between applying for jobs (I now think of it as applying for rejection letters), I’m constructing a raised garden. As with the garage studio a couple of years ago, it’s being done all with on-hand stuff—I do not expect to pay for anything except some extra dirt. Growing one’s own vegetables is a good Depression activity; yes, it cuts into the profits of the grocery store (and I know and like the guy who owns the local grocery store), but at some point I have to give him the same message I give folks about the music business: The world is changing. Deal with it.
And where DO we go now with the music business? Pretty quickly, I won’t have the freedom to travel, because there will no longer be any money at all (I’ve been preparing for it, I guess, by minimizing everything I do). But I do have a few things I want to do.
I want to record another album. Two albums, actually; one of Failed Economy Show songs, the other of my stuff. I wonder if that’d be possible to do with that new mixer John got? If the levels could be set right—which may be difficult to do with a drummer in the mix—we could record bass, drums, rhythm guitar and vocals live, and then overlay a lead guitar part and Dick’s blues harp. For about half the songs in the Failed Economy Show—the country ones--I could do an acceptable lead; for the rest, I’d need someone else. (It’d be nice to have a piano doing the lead on the ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” for instance.)
And I want gigs. Not only is public performance the only outlet I have for exposing my music to the public, but Madonna’s Mantra says performance is the only way to make it in the music business these days. We start small, I guess—me and solo guitar down at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. I have to ask the owner (who may well say no—Jeff was the main attraction there, not me). But having a “home base” is important for getting other business. If by some wild chance I end up getting another out-of-town job, the Ghost Hole gig can just disappear. It’ll have been just for tips and exposure anyway. I’ll have to see if my two tiny (and old) amps are enough to do the job—it’ll be two more weeks before the librarian has her new PA, and can sell me her old one (if I can afford to buy it).
Need some contests to enter this year, too. American Idol won’t be having a contest this year (rumor has it the new judge, who is a songwriter, will be doing it as part of the deal that got her the judge job); I don’t think there’s a Woody Guthrie song contest this year, either, or a Hank Williams Festival—both were abandoned last year. I don’t see any point in entering any of the big ballyhooed competitions whose purpose seems to be to generate income for the organizers. (I did find one in Michigan that recently decided to start accepting submissions from Outside. And its grand prize, like a lot of the contests I enter, is performing on stage.)
On the good news front, I did musicate Beth Williams’ “Kidney Stone Blues,” and it was okay—people liked it. And I did manage to pull it off in one take (well, four takes—one each for rhythm guitar, vocal, lead, and bass guitar). Now I need something else to do. Besides apply for jobs and shovel dirt.
Joe
At home, in between applying for jobs (I now think of it as applying for rejection letters), I’m constructing a raised garden. As with the garage studio a couple of years ago, it’s being done all with on-hand stuff—I do not expect to pay for anything except some extra dirt. Growing one’s own vegetables is a good Depression activity; yes, it cuts into the profits of the grocery store (and I know and like the guy who owns the local grocery store), but at some point I have to give him the same message I give folks about the music business: The world is changing. Deal with it.
And where DO we go now with the music business? Pretty quickly, I won’t have the freedom to travel, because there will no longer be any money at all (I’ve been preparing for it, I guess, by minimizing everything I do). But I do have a few things I want to do.
I want to record another album. Two albums, actually; one of Failed Economy Show songs, the other of my stuff. I wonder if that’d be possible to do with that new mixer John got? If the levels could be set right—which may be difficult to do with a drummer in the mix—we could record bass, drums, rhythm guitar and vocals live, and then overlay a lead guitar part and Dick’s blues harp. For about half the songs in the Failed Economy Show—the country ones--I could do an acceptable lead; for the rest, I’d need someone else. (It’d be nice to have a piano doing the lead on the ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” for instance.)
And I want gigs. Not only is public performance the only outlet I have for exposing my music to the public, but Madonna’s Mantra says performance is the only way to make it in the music business these days. We start small, I guess—me and solo guitar down at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. I have to ask the owner (who may well say no—Jeff was the main attraction there, not me). But having a “home base” is important for getting other business. If by some wild chance I end up getting another out-of-town job, the Ghost Hole gig can just disappear. It’ll have been just for tips and exposure anyway. I’ll have to see if my two tiny (and old) amps are enough to do the job—it’ll be two more weeks before the librarian has her new PA, and can sell me her old one (if I can afford to buy it).
Need some contests to enter this year, too. American Idol won’t be having a contest this year (rumor has it the new judge, who is a songwriter, will be doing it as part of the deal that got her the judge job); I don’t think there’s a Woody Guthrie song contest this year, either, or a Hank Williams Festival—both were abandoned last year. I don’t see any point in entering any of the big ballyhooed competitions whose purpose seems to be to generate income for the organizers. (I did find one in Michigan that recently decided to start accepting submissions from Outside. And its grand prize, like a lot of the contests I enter, is performing on stage.)
On the good news front, I did musicate Beth Williams’ “Kidney Stone Blues,” and it was okay—people liked it. And I did manage to pull it off in one take (well, four takes—one each for rhythm guitar, vocal, lead, and bass guitar). Now I need something else to do. Besides apply for jobs and shovel dirt.
Joe
Thursday, May 7, 2009
MUSEUM CONCERT SETLIST...
Having received three rejections in two days (one each by phone, e-mail, and letter), I had started writing a “discouraged” blog, but had to give up—I really can’t stay discouraged too long. I usually can find things to keep me busy, and happy if not satisfied. I’ve toyed with the idea of announcing to my colleagues in the city managers association that I’m going to award a prize for the best rejection letter—there are still a few cities I haven’theard from. Prize will be one of my CDs, of course—that won’t cost me any money.
Time to assemble a setlist for the Garibaldi Museum concert (26 June). That’ll be an hour-long show, and between the songs from the Failed Economy Show and the March concert in Bay City, there’s a good 3-1/2 hours of material to pick from. We’ll have a different lead guitarist—Wayne, if he’s interested. Practice a week from Sunday. The suggestion was made that I write up a setlist of about 15 songs, and have the band pick a dozen of those (which would be just about exactly an hour’s worth of music). Works for me.
My choices? Well, I’d start with the ones people seemed to like the best from the Failed Economy Show. Those are:
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Final Payment (Gem Watson)—Gospel two-step
Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie)—swing with strong beat
Things are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—also a two-step, but a little faster and in a different key
So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—two-step
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (me)—mod. slow & sleazy quasi-blues
Free-Range Person (me)—fast bluegrass
First four are the ones that got people out of their chairs and dancing. Rest are ones they didn’t dance to, but seemed to like the best. And then from the Bay City concert, where the songs were mostly mine:
No Good Songs About the War—mod. slow two-step
Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Tillamook Railroad Blues—mod. slow traditional blues
Bluebird on My Windshield—fast trucker rhythm
Dead Things in the Shower (me & Bobbie Gallup)—pretty fast two-step
A couple more? ‘The Termite Song,” maybe, because it’s really fast, and “Duct Tape,” because it’s one of the most-requested. We could close the show with “Duct Tape,” or one of the fast-moving Woody Guthrie songs, either “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad” (which the Grateful Dead used as a final number) or “Worried Man Blues” (which the punk-rock band Screamin’ Gulch used to use). Another possibility: “Doing Battle with the Lawn.” It is lawn-cutting time again on the coast, and with all the rain we’ve had, people—the guys, anyway—ought to appreciate the sentiments.
John (bass) and Dick (harmonica) are familiar with all of these; Chris (drums) only knows the ones we did at the Failed Economy Show. Wayne (lead guitar) was at the Failed Economy Show, so he did hear all the songs we did, plus he’s been to enough Friday Night Group sessions that he’s probably heard all of my songs on the list. We could be okay without a lot of work, in other words.
The other thing I’d like to do, if possible, is record some of these—with Wayne playing lead guitar if he’s willing, and me if he’s not. (There are a few of the Failed Economy Songs where I could do a decent lead—but not many,) I understand our videotape didn’t come out very good, and the audio recorder only caught a few songs (its memory wasn’t as big as everybody thought)—but we did have people sign up to be notified when the CD came out, and I’d hate to disappoint them.
TO DO: Talk to the owner of the Ghost Hole Tavern about having me take over playing music Wednesday nights (I don’t think Jeff is coming back); talk to the librarian about her little PA (cheap, I hope); music Friday night at City Hall and Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook Library. A Beth Williams song to musicate, now that I have time, and a lead guitar track someone wants me to do on a blues. And rejection letters to apply for. Can’t forget those.
Joe
Time to assemble a setlist for the Garibaldi Museum concert (26 June). That’ll be an hour-long show, and between the songs from the Failed Economy Show and the March concert in Bay City, there’s a good 3-1/2 hours of material to pick from. We’ll have a different lead guitarist—Wayne, if he’s interested. Practice a week from Sunday. The suggestion was made that I write up a setlist of about 15 songs, and have the band pick a dozen of those (which would be just about exactly an hour’s worth of music). Works for me.
My choices? Well, I’d start with the ones people seemed to like the best from the Failed Economy Show. Those are:
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Final Payment (Gem Watson)—Gospel two-step
Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie)—swing with strong beat
Things are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—also a two-step, but a little faster and in a different key
So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—two-step
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (me)—mod. slow & sleazy quasi-blues
Free-Range Person (me)—fast bluegrass
First four are the ones that got people out of their chairs and dancing. Rest are ones they didn’t dance to, but seemed to like the best. And then from the Bay City concert, where the songs were mostly mine:
No Good Songs About the War—mod. slow two-step
Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Tillamook Railroad Blues—mod. slow traditional blues
Bluebird on My Windshield—fast trucker rhythm
Dead Things in the Shower (me & Bobbie Gallup)—pretty fast two-step
A couple more? ‘The Termite Song,” maybe, because it’s really fast, and “Duct Tape,” because it’s one of the most-requested. We could close the show with “Duct Tape,” or one of the fast-moving Woody Guthrie songs, either “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad” (which the Grateful Dead used as a final number) or “Worried Man Blues” (which the punk-rock band Screamin’ Gulch used to use). Another possibility: “Doing Battle with the Lawn.” It is lawn-cutting time again on the coast, and with all the rain we’ve had, people—the guys, anyway—ought to appreciate the sentiments.
John (bass) and Dick (harmonica) are familiar with all of these; Chris (drums) only knows the ones we did at the Failed Economy Show. Wayne (lead guitar) was at the Failed Economy Show, so he did hear all the songs we did, plus he’s been to enough Friday Night Group sessions that he’s probably heard all of my songs on the list. We could be okay without a lot of work, in other words.
The other thing I’d like to do, if possible, is record some of these—with Wayne playing lead guitar if he’s willing, and me if he’s not. (There are a few of the Failed Economy Songs where I could do a decent lead—but not many,) I understand our videotape didn’t come out very good, and the audio recorder only caught a few songs (its memory wasn’t as big as everybody thought)—but we did have people sign up to be notified when the CD came out, and I’d hate to disappoint them.
TO DO: Talk to the owner of the Ghost Hole Tavern about having me take over playing music Wednesday nights (I don’t think Jeff is coming back); talk to the librarian about her little PA (cheap, I hope); music Friday night at City Hall and Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook Library. A Beth Williams song to musicate, now that I have time, and a lead guitar track someone wants me to do on a blues. And rejection letters to apply for. Can’t forget those.
Joe
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
A BLUES BLOG?
Tom Yeager, one of the songwriters at Just Plain Folks (http://www.jpfolks.com), is fond of passing on gig opportunities—usually in the Nashville area, where he lives. One recent one was a solicitation to write a blog. An “American Blues” Website wants six writers, each to write a weekly blog about the blues; one will be posted every day.
I could do that. “The Writer’s Blog” has been a regular writing exercise for 2-1/2 years now—a little over a page in the word processor, at least once a week (and more like two to four times a week since I got unemployed 13 months ago). It has kept honed the old newspaperman’s skills of writing for space and writing for deadline, and expressing a complete thought in reasonably literate language. (That’s good training for songwriting, too.) But BLUES? I may be a musician and songwriter, but do I know enough about the blues to be able to write something intelligent about it every week?
I would probably have to do it a little differently. (I always seem to be saying that.) I do know a lot of writers; that became obvious when I was assembling material for the Failed Economy Show benefit for the food bank—I got tons of stuff from people all over the world, and picking out an hour and a half’s worth that the band liked, and thought we could do justice to, wasn’t easy. One reason I wanted to pick independent, unknown writers is because they’re independent and unknown, like me; these are the people who have been closed out of the music industry. It doesn’t matter whether their stuff is better than what you hear on the radio (and much of it is)—they’re not part of The Club, and they’ll never get attention. Some are gigging, and some not. (One guy was 92 years old.)
I could talk about the ones who “do” blues, and why, and what triggers the stuff they write; I could try analyzing some of their material, suggesting maybe why it was good writing—emphasizing that like any artistic analysis, my opinion is wholly subjective and personal (just because I know what I’m doing does not mean that I’m right). I could tell folks where to find their material—their Websites, if they have any—and whether they’re gigging, and whether they have records for sale. The same stuff I put in the Failed Economy Show program handouts for the writers whose stuff we performed there.
Do I know what “the blues” IS? People tend to think they do; they’ll hear a piece of music and say, “that’s blues,” but they’re often not able to say WHY. It’s an amorphous thing, like a little kid peeing in the swimming pool—you know it’s there, but can’t quite pin down where. Maybe that’s a question that should be asked of the blues boys and girls: “What makes what you do ‘the blues’?”
I’ll offer my own definition (I am fond of pat one-liners), one I picked up from an old blues guitarist. The blues, he said, “is all about getting up in the morning.” That’s a dig at the stereotypical opening line of a lot of blues songs (“I woke up this morning”—I used it myself, in my “Blood on the Floo’ Blues”), but it goes deeper. It’s an ATTITUDE—life is not pleasant, and things happen to you, but you have to get up in the morning and deal with it anyway. Determination, in other words, colored in many cases by a good bit of pain—and it permeates most of the blues I know, even the happy ones. It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of early blues music was written by Southern blacks who USED TO be slaves.
That enough? I’ll contact these “American Blues” folks and see if they’re interested in hearing from me. If not—well, there’s probably another blues in it.
Joe
I could do that. “The Writer’s Blog” has been a regular writing exercise for 2-1/2 years now—a little over a page in the word processor, at least once a week (and more like two to four times a week since I got unemployed 13 months ago). It has kept honed the old newspaperman’s skills of writing for space and writing for deadline, and expressing a complete thought in reasonably literate language. (That’s good training for songwriting, too.) But BLUES? I may be a musician and songwriter, but do I know enough about the blues to be able to write something intelligent about it every week?
I would probably have to do it a little differently. (I always seem to be saying that.) I do know a lot of writers; that became obvious when I was assembling material for the Failed Economy Show benefit for the food bank—I got tons of stuff from people all over the world, and picking out an hour and a half’s worth that the band liked, and thought we could do justice to, wasn’t easy. One reason I wanted to pick independent, unknown writers is because they’re independent and unknown, like me; these are the people who have been closed out of the music industry. It doesn’t matter whether their stuff is better than what you hear on the radio (and much of it is)—they’re not part of The Club, and they’ll never get attention. Some are gigging, and some not. (One guy was 92 years old.)
I could talk about the ones who “do” blues, and why, and what triggers the stuff they write; I could try analyzing some of their material, suggesting maybe why it was good writing—emphasizing that like any artistic analysis, my opinion is wholly subjective and personal (just because I know what I’m doing does not mean that I’m right). I could tell folks where to find their material—their Websites, if they have any—and whether they’re gigging, and whether they have records for sale. The same stuff I put in the Failed Economy Show program handouts for the writers whose stuff we performed there.
Do I know what “the blues” IS? People tend to think they do; they’ll hear a piece of music and say, “that’s blues,” but they’re often not able to say WHY. It’s an amorphous thing, like a little kid peeing in the swimming pool—you know it’s there, but can’t quite pin down where. Maybe that’s a question that should be asked of the blues boys and girls: “What makes what you do ‘the blues’?”
I’ll offer my own definition (I am fond of pat one-liners), one I picked up from an old blues guitarist. The blues, he said, “is all about getting up in the morning.” That’s a dig at the stereotypical opening line of a lot of blues songs (“I woke up this morning”—I used it myself, in my “Blood on the Floo’ Blues”), but it goes deeper. It’s an ATTITUDE—life is not pleasant, and things happen to you, but you have to get up in the morning and deal with it anyway. Determination, in other words, colored in many cases by a good bit of pain—and it permeates most of the blues I know, even the happy ones. It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of early blues music was written by Southern blacks who USED TO be slaves.
That enough? I’ll contact these “American Blues” folks and see if they’re interested in hearing from me. If not—well, there’s probably another blues in it.
Joe
Sunday, May 3, 2009
THE FAILED ECONOMY SHOW...
The Failed Economy show is done. Fingers are sore (and I broke the D string again), but I can still type. A quick post-mortem:
The crowd wasn’t as big as I’d have liked, but they stuck around—danced, even—and were generous. The Food Bank was ecstatic, and the City got some cash in the toilet-shaped piggy bank for the Sewer Discount Program, too. The video lady didn’t show, but we got good video with Dick’s camera, I think, with sound fed from John’s new mixer (and that should be good). The 21 songs went for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
A big surprise was the number of people who were up dancing to the Southern Pigfish song, “For Their Own Ends.” I know Chris the drummer and John the bass player like it—it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and both of them come from rock backgrounds—but I had no idea the audience would like it, much less be out of their chairs dancing to it. Other good dance numbers: Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer” (which we had deliberately arranged as a dance tune), Gem Watson’s “Final Payment” (another surprise), and Gene Burnett’s “Things Are Getting Better Now that Things Are Getting Worse.” (I’ve sent congratulatory notes to both Gem and Gene.) When you got people dancing, you know you’ve got a keeper. These are keepers of the first order.
People also liked our ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” (they listened raptly), Betty Holt’s “Our Own Little Stimulus Plan,” my bluegrass “Free-Range Person,” and Woody Guthrie’s blues number “Aginst the Law.” All are probably includables in future sets, whatever the subject matter.
It was good to “do” the hall early; since we had the Dance Floor for the weekend, we started setting up at noon, and spent four hours at it, getting everything perfect. We had two sound systems—the “live” sound configured for the Dance Floor’s rotten acoustics, run through the Friday Night Group’s PA, and the “recorded” sound, picked up from two overhead mikes set up out in the audience, and re-mixed with John’s new mixer and fed to both the audio recorder and the video camera. Tested everything repeatedly. Then we all got to go home, shower, eat, nap if we wanted, and at Gig Time, just had to flip a switch and play. Allowed us to come across as very professional.
I was approached by Wayne, the lead guitarist I know, offering to fill in any time we were sans a lead player; he said he wouldn’t need to practice (I heard that from another lead guitarist recently—is this a genetic thing?). Wayne is very good; I tapped him to play lead on a recording of the old Gospel hymn “Turn Your Radio On” for a contest a couple of years ago—his country-barroom lead was and is a perfect fit for a hymn, the more so because it’s so unexpected. He regularly plays on Friday nights at City Hall with the Friday Night Group and Saturday afternoons at the Library, so he’s familiar with a lot of my stuff.
And I did get one suggestion for a band name. (That means somebody read the program—I didn’t mention it anywhere else.)
Next step, I guess, is to see how the video came out. If the sound is good, we’ve got a promotional tool. The fact that we did the Failed Economy Show should get us in a lot of doors—people may not remember the show, but they’ll remember the publicity.
Lessons? (There are always lessons.) We need someone separate from the band to run sound; I’ve heard that from professional sound engineers before, but the show underscores their point. It’s impossible for someone in the band to both play and deal with levels at the same time. Recent practice is a good idea; all the songs that we practiced that day—under the guise of testing out the sound levels—came off really good in the evening’s performance.
Next scheduled gig is at the Garibaldi Museum, last Saturday in June (unless we get one before then), and I think everybody’s up for it.
Joe
The crowd wasn’t as big as I’d have liked, but they stuck around—danced, even—and were generous. The Food Bank was ecstatic, and the City got some cash in the toilet-shaped piggy bank for the Sewer Discount Program, too. The video lady didn’t show, but we got good video with Dick’s camera, I think, with sound fed from John’s new mixer (and that should be good). The 21 songs went for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
A big surprise was the number of people who were up dancing to the Southern Pigfish song, “For Their Own Ends.” I know Chris the drummer and John the bass player like it—it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and both of them come from rock backgrounds—but I had no idea the audience would like it, much less be out of their chairs dancing to it. Other good dance numbers: Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer” (which we had deliberately arranged as a dance tune), Gem Watson’s “Final Payment” (another surprise), and Gene Burnett’s “Things Are Getting Better Now that Things Are Getting Worse.” (I’ve sent congratulatory notes to both Gem and Gene.) When you got people dancing, you know you’ve got a keeper. These are keepers of the first order.
People also liked our ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” (they listened raptly), Betty Holt’s “Our Own Little Stimulus Plan,” my bluegrass “Free-Range Person,” and Woody Guthrie’s blues number “Aginst the Law.” All are probably includables in future sets, whatever the subject matter.
It was good to “do” the hall early; since we had the Dance Floor for the weekend, we started setting up at noon, and spent four hours at it, getting everything perfect. We had two sound systems—the “live” sound configured for the Dance Floor’s rotten acoustics, run through the Friday Night Group’s PA, and the “recorded” sound, picked up from two overhead mikes set up out in the audience, and re-mixed with John’s new mixer and fed to both the audio recorder and the video camera. Tested everything repeatedly. Then we all got to go home, shower, eat, nap if we wanted, and at Gig Time, just had to flip a switch and play. Allowed us to come across as very professional.
I was approached by Wayne, the lead guitarist I know, offering to fill in any time we were sans a lead player; he said he wouldn’t need to practice (I heard that from another lead guitarist recently—is this a genetic thing?). Wayne is very good; I tapped him to play lead on a recording of the old Gospel hymn “Turn Your Radio On” for a contest a couple of years ago—his country-barroom lead was and is a perfect fit for a hymn, the more so because it’s so unexpected. He regularly plays on Friday nights at City Hall with the Friday Night Group and Saturday afternoons at the Library, so he’s familiar with a lot of my stuff.
And I did get one suggestion for a band name. (That means somebody read the program—I didn’t mention it anywhere else.)
Next step, I guess, is to see how the video came out. If the sound is good, we’ve got a promotional tool. The fact that we did the Failed Economy Show should get us in a lot of doors—people may not remember the show, but they’ll remember the publicity.
Lessons? (There are always lessons.) We need someone separate from the band to run sound; I’ve heard that from professional sound engineers before, but the show underscores their point. It’s impossible for someone in the band to both play and deal with levels at the same time. Recent practice is a good idea; all the songs that we practiced that day—under the guise of testing out the sound levels—came off really good in the evening’s performance.
Next scheduled gig is at the Garibaldi Museum, last Saturday in June (unless we get one before then), and I think everybody’s up for it.
Joe
Saturday, May 2, 2009
RED ROOM POST-MORTEM (&C.)...
Post-Red Room, pre-Failed Economy Show post. Will do another post-mortem after the Failed Economy Show. (The band will need to discuss how we did, I think.)
Red Room gig went well. Don the blues harp player wasn’t there, but lead guitarist David was, and we were okay. Even lead guitarists have to practice, though; we (and he) could have been better. We had better control over the sound this time, and even though it was a Thursday night we had a good crowd. (And just like last time, the majority of the crowd left after we were done. I don’t know if they were there to hear us, but they sure weren’t there to hear the other bands.)
The two “bands” on after us—an electric guitar soloist, and a drums-and-electric-guitar duo, were way too loud, and we didn’t stick around even to pick up our “pay” (which we expected, like last time, to be minimal). My video camera didn’t work, and Sharma’s got lost, I think, in our haste to get out of there and away from the noise, so no video. It’ll be a little while before I find out how the audio recording came out.
I don’t know where the Portland band is going to go. Perhaps nowhere; it consumes a lot of time, and don’t make a dime—and right now, there isn’t a lead instrument. Maybe I should just go back to concentrating on soliciting solo gigs in the Portland area, and when I get one that has to have a band, re-assemble the band. In the meantime, we can play occasionally for fun. (And I do want to encourage Sharma to play bass.)
We won’t have lead guitarist Jeff at the Failed Economy Show—I had rather expected that, having left messages for over a week that didn’t get returned. I did reach him at the last minute—that’ll teach him to answer the phone without checking who’s calling, I guess. He admitted he’d been avoiding me, feeling guilty about not doing the gig (I didn’t chide him—I have a tendency to do the same avoidance thing). I think Dick, our blues harp player, will do just fine as the lead instrument, though I’m sure people will miss Jeff, and ask about him.
Down the road, I think we can find us a new guitarist; John knows one, and I know one, and we’ll ask ‘em. Or maybe it ought to be a different lead instrument. Any “non-whiny” lead would do—banjo, mandolin, dobro, pedal steel. It really doesn’t matter. (I think I know a banjo player, too.)
On the positive side, the lady who usually films the county commissioners and suchlike public meetings will try to be there with her video equipment; she’s excited about the idea of doing a food bank promotion on cable TV covering two counties (I’d hoped she would be). We’ll have Dick’s video camera there, too. And John got his new mixer—came three weeks earlier than they said it would—and it’ll be better, he thinks, than the Friday Night Group’s PA (and it’s a teeny fraction of the size, too). We’ll have the afternoon to play with the sound if we need to. Maybe time to practice some of the songs again as well.
I have all the songs memorized, I think, having spent every waking minute singing to myself for several days. Can I do them in order in front of a crowd? I hope so.
Jeff’s departure from the local scene does mean there’s an opportunity for a weekly performance at the Ghost Hole tavern. I don’t have a PA system, though—but I know someone who’s getting a new one, and I have let her know I’d be interested in her old one, if it was cheap enough. (She is aware I am waydam cheap—and unemployed to boot.) With that, I could do it—and maybe attract others. There is a crowd—a small one—that has gotten used to having live music at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. It’d be good to not disappoint them.
Joe
Red Room gig went well. Don the blues harp player wasn’t there, but lead guitarist David was, and we were okay. Even lead guitarists have to practice, though; we (and he) could have been better. We had better control over the sound this time, and even though it was a Thursday night we had a good crowd. (And just like last time, the majority of the crowd left after we were done. I don’t know if they were there to hear us, but they sure weren’t there to hear the other bands.)
The two “bands” on after us—an electric guitar soloist, and a drums-and-electric-guitar duo, were way too loud, and we didn’t stick around even to pick up our “pay” (which we expected, like last time, to be minimal). My video camera didn’t work, and Sharma’s got lost, I think, in our haste to get out of there and away from the noise, so no video. It’ll be a little while before I find out how the audio recording came out.
I don’t know where the Portland band is going to go. Perhaps nowhere; it consumes a lot of time, and don’t make a dime—and right now, there isn’t a lead instrument. Maybe I should just go back to concentrating on soliciting solo gigs in the Portland area, and when I get one that has to have a band, re-assemble the band. In the meantime, we can play occasionally for fun. (And I do want to encourage Sharma to play bass.)
We won’t have lead guitarist Jeff at the Failed Economy Show—I had rather expected that, having left messages for over a week that didn’t get returned. I did reach him at the last minute—that’ll teach him to answer the phone without checking who’s calling, I guess. He admitted he’d been avoiding me, feeling guilty about not doing the gig (I didn’t chide him—I have a tendency to do the same avoidance thing). I think Dick, our blues harp player, will do just fine as the lead instrument, though I’m sure people will miss Jeff, and ask about him.
Down the road, I think we can find us a new guitarist; John knows one, and I know one, and we’ll ask ‘em. Or maybe it ought to be a different lead instrument. Any “non-whiny” lead would do—banjo, mandolin, dobro, pedal steel. It really doesn’t matter. (I think I know a banjo player, too.)
On the positive side, the lady who usually films the county commissioners and suchlike public meetings will try to be there with her video equipment; she’s excited about the idea of doing a food bank promotion on cable TV covering two counties (I’d hoped she would be). We’ll have Dick’s video camera there, too. And John got his new mixer—came three weeks earlier than they said it would—and it’ll be better, he thinks, than the Friday Night Group’s PA (and it’s a teeny fraction of the size, too). We’ll have the afternoon to play with the sound if we need to. Maybe time to practice some of the songs again as well.
I have all the songs memorized, I think, having spent every waking minute singing to myself for several days. Can I do them in order in front of a crowd? I hope so.
Jeff’s departure from the local scene does mean there’s an opportunity for a weekly performance at the Ghost Hole tavern. I don’t have a PA system, though—but I know someone who’s getting a new one, and I have let her know I’d be interested in her old one, if it was cheap enough. (She is aware I am waydam cheap—and unemployed to boot.) With that, I could do it—and maybe attract others. There is a crowd—a small one—that has gotten used to having live music at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. It’d be good to not disappoint them.
Joe
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